Patterns that recur over and over again characterize the kind of strategic change that generally brings business success. For the most part, huge changes that redo everything do not foster success. The writings on this web site generally advocate an evolutionary approach to business growth. For the most part, successful change should be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Sometimes, however, it may seem appropriate to make bigger changes that might appear to lean a bit more toward being revolutionary. But, under what circumstances can this work?
A recent Wall Street Journal article ignited the spark for this discussion. The article, “Is It Apple’s Time to Get Behind the Wheel?“ by Christopher Mims, appeared May 22-23, 2021 issue. The article covers Apple’s role as a participant in the auto industry. Additionally, the article explains that most automobiles have a separate microchip for every automated feature, adding new microchips that don’t talk to each other whenever a new computerized feature is put on the car. The article says, “Today’s most complicated automobiles have up to 200 computers in them.”
But, as the article explains, Tesla uses a different approach. According to the article, “Tesla pioneered replacing hundreds of small computers with a handful of bigger, more powerful ones.” As a result, “Tesla can add new capabilities to its vehicles through over-the-air updates. It’s very much like the model of continual updates to the software in our mobile devices.”
As I see it, Tesla’s approach might give the impression of being a bigger change, as opposed to being a series of small evolutionary steps, which is what generally characterizes business success. Tesla appears to be changing numerous areas in the car where microchips are used. And, changing too many things can be an impediment to success. In fact, a tendency to change so much of what the auto industry had been doing apparently did slow Tesla’s path to profitability.
However, replacing numerous small computers with a few bigger ones may essentially be like making one change shifting to the next generation technology. And, shifting to the next generation of technology without changing everything else can be successful. So, Tesla’s consolidating of in-auto computing may be workable, as opposed to being excess change that normally fares poorly. The key to success is to avoid changing everything. But, when one change is made repetitively across many parts of the car, there can be a good chance of success if too many other things don’t change. In other words, this type of change can still be evolutionary. And, evolutionary change is what generally brings success.
